


Last Day

by TwoCatsTailoring



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-09
Updated: 2014-09-09
Packaged: 2018-02-16 18:38:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2280453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwoCatsTailoring/pseuds/TwoCatsTailoring
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Railway Guard for Sector Seven reflects on his job during his last shift before retiring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FFlove190](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FFlove190/gifts).



Last day on the job as a Railway Guard and he couldn’t say that he was disappointed. Another six hours working for ShinRa and a very generous retirement package was waiting to carry him through the rest of his life. 

He would not call them declining because the goddess knew that he was far from that. With ShinRa since the age of sixteen and having put in his thirty years with the company, he was far from done with life. And he had big plans.

But the future was not where his mind was this night. No, his mind was tracking backwards now. The announcement of the explosive destruction of two reactors in a short time only made him sigh now, after having seen so much of humanity over the years. 

From errand boy, to driver, to being given the choice of stations, he’d chosen this slum platform from youthful curiosity. The ability to go back up to the plate at night, sleeping sound and snug was, at first, a comfort. But as he ageD, married, had a family of his own, perhaps it was sentiment that had him getting attached to the people who called Sector 7 home. 

And now, after so long, he had learned a lot about humanity. He was no longer as surprised as he had once been to realize that there was no one slice of the social pie that had the market cornered on rudeness, although the continued politeness of those enigmatic Turks never failed to catch him off guard.

But it was not these occasional guests who he would miss, he realized now. He sighed heavily as the train rolled in to the station again, going about his job as mere habit now. He would miss these people, bleary-eyed and quiet at this hour, who went up to the plate to do the jobs no one wanted but someone had to do, generally for a wage that bordered on servitude without the perks of room and board. He would miss the lovers coming home from a night on the town, now a generation removed from their parents who did the same thing, all of them saving up for months just for this treat.

He would miss the children too, that he had quickly learned were often not as well-watched as they should be. That had been his first volunteer job here, actually. Keeping an eye on the children who, if they were lucky enough to have parents, were alone much of the time because those parents had to work long hours just to scrape a living out of this place.

The train left again and he settled in, smiling a little at the memories of all those children and of the small girl whose mother had died at the station several years before. How he had felt for that child and for the woman who ended up taking her in. He’d considered taking her home himself, his wife having always been touched by the stories he’d told. But she was better off he hoped, with the widow. 

He hoped they both were.

His sentimental possessiveness of this place was running high tonight on the eve of his leaving it.

Another train pulled in and he stood a little straighter as a twinge of guilt, he’d only just been thinking of them a little while before, the Turks disembarked. That one with the hair as red as a rooster’s comb spoke politely (if not casually) to him in greeting and the big quiet guy just nodded, adjusting his sunglasses. Sunglasses in the slums where sun didn’t happen. Seemed foolish but he didn’t dare question it.

He shook his head and noticed that local band of anti-ShinRa folks as they ran by from the train graveyard. He chuckled. Anti-ShinRa indeed, when the first person to arrive with a hot drink on a frigid night was that little bar keeper and the one person he could count on for help with the old folks was Wallace. They’d probably been off training again, though he more felt like it was a public service to keep the monsters, small but mean, from getting out of hand.

Out went the train and he sighed. Maybe he could come back here. Give some proper business to the little bar she owned. Make an effort to make friends instead of just acquaintances. It was just the two of them now. Maybe he would bring his wife, show her where he’d worked and the people who were here. The people, he'd only just realized as his eyes began to sting a little, he felt as possessive of as he did of this platform and these trains.

Yeah, that sounded good. Starting tomorrow, his big plans could wait a few weeks. After all, he had his whole life ahead of him. 


End file.
